Electricity experiments

[AndrewAPrice]

With a wire attached. I dunno what I'm talking about, just some cool thing that gives the illusion of an electric gun.

[inflater]

Electric gun. You watch too much sci-fi

The four things aren't "pins", just screw windings with nuts. (I don't think I've understood you.)

[inflater]

I've tried to move the wire I shorted with the heatsink (the one with the lightbulb) far from any conductors, and I've insulated every wire that has been soldered. This time, I've assembled the PSU's casing and I've put hand gloves , put the power cable into 230V and switched it on. Bang! the PSU responded quickly.

I've disassembled it again and saw its internal fuse blown completely, not only the wire. Also a small capacitor had a perfect mark of power surge...

So a repair would be very easy, all I need to have is another PSU and replace the wires from the old one... Anyone with a spare one?

[01000101]

just go down to a computer recycling centre or a local computer store and see what junk computers you can scroung from.. When I worked as an IT Tech, we would give our old crappy beige left-over machines to anyone that would take them as they just took up space in our storage.

[inflater]

I think I'm gonna visit the collective scrapyard for any computers out there...

[inflater]

Well, I've plugged in my old homemade sausage cooker again just for the time sake. The original thread about this thing was here: http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15002 but I've kept the "machine" alone.

Now I decided to film the process... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69wyuZkFi1o

[Alboin]

Now I decided to film the process... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69wyuZkFi1o

That seems very.....unsafe.....

[inflater]

That seems very.....unsafe.....

I know, that's why I'm doing it - cool electric chair, isn't it?

[kmcguire]

You might find building a voltage multiplier by stacking diodes and capacitors fun. It forgot who used this but they built a really large one (a scientist) and generated high enough voltage to do some sort of nuclear testing or something.. can not remember.

I have actually made one, but it only had three or four stages. It actually did work! You can find diodes in old electronic equipment and capacitors. Just use some heat to desoder them from old boards.

You just need a sinusoidal input wave. I am not sure, but if you were able to use a fairly large capacitor at the end you might be able to hold a higher current load at the expense of more charge time.

http://www.play-hookey.com/ac_theory/ps ... liers.html

[inflater]

My sausage video was a response to the video named "Sausage-230V", where you can see more clearly what happens with the sausage (in my video I've covered the sausage to prevent sparks flying and the fat to squirt off), but my point was to eat the sausage afterwards, as opposed to that video which can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvS6bOKL ... re=related

Actually when you just compare these two videos, which are using straight out 230V (I've used only one phase though.. it would be more funnier with three ) between the 110V "sausage": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lluftec11s - you can see the difference between 230 and 110 volts

On the other side, the cooking process depends on the current flowing through the hotdog. This video below shows a 230V sausage being converted to coal in 10 seconds by placing the electrodes a bit different way to decrease the hotdog's resistance and pass more current to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iztM5THa ... re=related
Ouch.

[inflater]

Anyways, I didnt found any spare PSU, so I decided to "hack" the old 266MHz testbed to output 5V and 12V straight out from the molex connector. It's a bit s/c proof - I accidentaly let two wires on a steel plate... computer didnt start again after 20 seconds, had to unplug and plug it back again (and set correct time, heh...) but it seems to be decent after all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fY195NS7Cc and the computer was on during all that stress testing .

[ChazZeromus]

its a great way to quick fry your computer/hdd in case of a bust.

Had I known those existed, I would have not gotten in trouble

[DT170x]

Anyways, I didnt found any spare PSU, so I decided to "hack" the old 266MHz testbed to output 5V and 12V straight out from the molex connector. It's a bit s/c proof - I accidentaly let two wires on a steel plate... computer didnt start again after 20 seconds, had to unplug and plug it back again (and set correct time, heh...) but it seems to be decent after all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fY195NS7Cc and the computer was on during all that stress testing

Did your computer suffer long term damage after doing your experiment to your computer.

I wont do it even it a Tandy 1000.

[inflater]

Did your computer suffer long term damage after doing your experiment to your computer.

Why? The graphite has some resistance and it's not like shorting with a copper wire. OK, I've (non-purposely) managed to short the terminals, but nothing serious happened.

I wont do it even it a Tandy 1000.

Me neither.

BTW I wanted to do this:
http://danyk.wz.cz/2moty.html

but as usually, I didnt found any microwaves. gah.

//EDIT 2:
I found a old harddrive without the head and platters, and it wasnt working so I've decided to turn it on, didnt worked, then switch the 5V input with 12V. Some sparks and smoke. Thats all? I expected more fun

[inflater]

I've decided to power up the TV flyback transformer using the PC "supply", a transistor, some wires and a 230V lightbulb as a high wattage resistor, but I had to find the "HV return" pin on the flyback so I tried pin 8, shorted the bigass high voltage cable with ground, then step away and turned the PC on. There was a high pitched squeal, but no spark... so I turned it off and carefully shorted the HV wire with ground. Yep, it was working properly, I heard a weird noise of something discharging. So then, I've put it on again, but this time just alone, without the HV wire shorted and I saw arcing on my primary, so I turned it off again and did the same with the HV wire.

When I began to align the primary using a duct tape, I heard some rattling in the flyback, so I plugged off the PC completely, thus ground pin on the PC was no longer grounded. The rattling noise was still there, but I didnt paid attention to it much. And suddenly, I heard (and felt) a spark on my hand, like from a static electricity, and in the microsecond, something threw me 0.5m away from the flyback... and the rattling stopped.

At least I know how it tastes to be a high voltage electrician.